California Hit with $31.6 Billion Audit Misstatement

American Thinker ^ | 06/03/2014 | Chriss Street

[SeekAndFind]

The California Bureau of State Audits set off a scandal on June 1st by disclosing that the State Controller’s Office made accounting misstatements amounting to $31.65 billion.  The timing of the announcement may be devastating to the Democrats who expected to use their super-majority to pass billions of dollars in increased spending, but may now find the net effects of the accounting restatements are a $7 billion General Fund deficit.   

California Governor Jerry Brown’s and State Controller John Chiang’s staff refused to go on camera and answer questions as the news broke. To give a perspective on the size of the accounting misstatements discovered by the Bureau of State Audits, the $31.65 billion in errors equals about a third of California’s $96.3 billion General Fund Budget for 2013-14. The improper accounting treatments included:

• $7.7 billion – Understated federal trust fund revenues and expenditures;
• $653 million – Overstated general fund assets and revenues
• $8 billion – Overstated California State University’s bond debt
• $9.1 billion – Understating a public building construction fund; and
• $6.2 billion – Overstatement of deferred tax-revenue.

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

Common Core math! Or George Bush!

Women and children hit worst.

[skeeter]

A little thing like a surprise 31.6 billion dollar hit to the budget won’t stop the democrats.

[txrefugee]

LOL…put a sock in it, all you CA Lefities, who infest every blog with your misinformation regarding the great CA recovery. You have a comptroller who can’t add or subtract. What CA university did he attend?

[jiggyboy]

We knew there was no budget surplus and wrote as much here when they were crowing about it, whenever that was, maybe a year ago.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Very eeenteresting.

Tit.
Wringer.
(Some assembly required)

[CodeToad]

Kali Kooking the Books! Totally predictable. Democrats are always criminals.

[AppyPappy]

The Democrats official response: Maybe we should let the Republicans be in charge for a few years.

[unixfox]

Ok, take these numbers, and instead of BILLIONS let’s say MILLIONS.

Now apply that to a major corporation. Would it be considered a felony?

[R_Kangel]

.... Didn't Governor Jerry Brown have a press conference 6-8 months ago to declare that California had a 30 billion dollar budget surplus because of his administrations brilliant policies and tactics?

.... Guess he didn't factor in the possibility that maybe the surplus just might be due to bad math.

[Mr. Jeeves]

You have a comptroller who can’t add or subtract.

More precisely, one who was pressured to fudge numbers and tell outright lies to achieve certain socialist goals. Somebody in the Bureau of State Audits is going to be in big trouble for revealing the truth.

[Uncle Chip]

Only off by $31.65 billion??

What do you expect — accuracy???

That’s close enough.

[GeronL]

wow. A kindergartner could get a more accurate count

[RightGeek]

[SMARTY]

It would be considered, SOLYNDRA, ETC.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

But we have incredible diversity in our accounting practices!

We have very close to an even split between overstatements and understatements. With an odd or unfair number of mis-statements, Common Core teaching standards show that this is as close to equitable as is possible using current methods. [please refer to pages 37-45 for the Common Core interpretation of "odd numbers" and some teaching examples]

In addition, we have passed laws that allow the understatements to use the audit rooms where we used to keep all the overstatements, and of course, the overstatements, in the interest of fairness, may freely make use of any state-owned facility previously reserved only for understatements...yet the strong anti-bullying measures we have passed give powerful protections to our understatements against any possible bullying by any overstatements.

Finally, we have also strengthened our health laws and demonstrated our concern for the public health of all Californians by passing stringent anti-smoking laws that apply to *all* public buildings, and with these new measures, within 20 feet of all building entrances. Therefore, it is now impossible for any event to blow a smoking hole in our budgetary process, since no such smoking event can or will permitted in any state owned building.

[Cementjungle]

The State Controller’s office blamed high staff turnover, lack of qualified staff, budget cuts, and late and incorrect data from numerous agencies for the errors.

Sounds to me like they think that their poor staff are underpaid.... that would of course be the fault of the evil Republicans.

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

And the real sad part of the story:

Politicians like Jerry Brown and John Chiang will most likely cruise to easy election victories.

The voters in CA simply don’t care.

Just as long as you have the “D” after your name. That’s all they care about.

[SeekAndFind]

[umgud]

Smoke and mirrors exposed.